Our fellow-citizens residing in the portions of the state which will be traversed by the railroads before mentioned, are alarmed by the great expense of the enlargement of the Erie canal, while those interested in the accomplishment of the latter undertaking regard with disfavor other applications for legislative aid. These jealousies, the obvious tendency of which is the disappointment of every claim upon the public munificence, have given new confidence to the opponents of all improvements. I can not doubt that your views and policy will be comprehensive and magnanimous, and will have reference not to local or temporary interests, but to the general and lasting prosperity of the state. I confidently hope that the unexpected discovery of the extent to which the engagements of the state have been carried by former legislatures may produce such moderation on the part of those who claim to share in the public munificence, such concessions of local interests, and such convictions of the importance to the whole state of the improvement of each section, as to enable you to adopt a plan of fiscal operations which will reinvigorate the public credit, and effectually secure the completion, without unnecessary delay, of each of the important works before mentioned. The retardation which has become necessary ought by no means to be considered as an abandonment of the policy of internal improvement. It is the fortune of enterprise to encounter obstacles and delays in the attainment of even demonstrable results, and certainly no undertaking so vast as our system of internal improvement was ever more eminently successful, or encountered obstacles less serious than those which now check its prosecution.

The present crisis has produced renewed opposition to the entire system. It is boldly denounced as unconstitutional, foreign to the legitimate sphere of legislative action, destructive of the liberties of the people, and ruinous to their welfare. The specious theory is promulgated that the duration of national existence is divisible into periods corresponding with generations of men, and that the state has at no time a right to undertake the construction of works which will leave a charge upon a subsequent generation. It is a necessary consequence of these principles that the entire system must be abandoned, and that the obligations assumed in its prosecution may be cast off by subsequent generations. These principles have been boldly avowed, and have tended to impair

the confidence of mankind in the integrity and good faith of the people of this state, but they derive no support from our history. Reason and experience teach that every human society has a continuous identity susceptible of indefinite prolongation, and incapable of division. The citizen of every state feels, as it has been well said, that although mortal himself, he is part of a community that may, and he hopes will, be perpetual. He is conscious that every important measure of government in which he may be engaged is in some degree the result of causes anterior to his own existence, and may be productive not only of consequences immediately affecting himself and his contemporaries, but of others pervading the whole state, and distant as its dissolution. The daily labors of life, although stimulated by immediate necessity, are cheered by the expectation of distant good. The generous efforts of public benefactors, by whose inventions, instructions, and achievements, our race has been raised from the savage condition, through every imperfect social state, to the freedom and dignity of self-government, have always been directed to objects more remote than those of immediate or personal advantage. Benevolent desires for the welfare of those who shall succeed us produce not only individual and domestic exertion, but social action in every form adapted to relieve the necessities or promote the welfare of mankind. Animated by such impulses, and aroused to such efforts with reference to distant periods, men seem to approximate here toward the dignity of character to which our race is destined in a future state. The susceptibility to such impulses and the power of making such efforts are among the strongest proofs that such a state awaits us. The human heart knows few passions stronger or more universal than the desire to be remembered when we shall have ceased to exist, and it estimates the value of fame by the lapse of time through which that fame may endure, and the portion of the earth it may pervade. The motives and achievements of the Revolutionary age knew no such miserable bounds as those now prescribed. Our national independence was sought and obtained not alone for those who achieved it, nor for one generation only, nor for a narrow cycle of years, nor for any period, but for all generations, and for all time. Our republican institutions were designed at their foundation for not only two millions of American people, but for us, and for as many millions as shall in VOL. II.-16

all time rise up and demand their protection. No citizen can be deprived of that protection because he was not of the generation by which it was guarantied, and no disloyal citizen can excuse his delinquency by pleading a limitation of allegiance. In the great struggle for independence the inquiry was not raised, what generation should sustain the expense of the conflict? During the period of almost sixty years occupied in paying the debt which was incurred, no citizen questioned its justice. The principle of internal improvement derives its existence from the generous impulses of the Revolutionary age. It regards the future welfare, prosperity, and happiness of the people. Its agency is everywhere salutary in encouraging emigration and the settlement and improvement of new lands, in augmenting national wealth, in promoting agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and the diffusion of knowledge, and in strengthening the bonds of our national Union. It is recited in the Declaration of Independence, as one of the wrongs committed by the king of England, that he had endeavored to prevent the population of these states, and for that purpose had obstructed the laws for the naturalization of foreigners, had refused to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and had raised the conditions of new appropriations of lands. The father of his country could had have none of the modern skepticism, when, in his first message to Congress, he recommended a facilitation of the intercourse between distant parts of the country, by a due attention to the postoffice and post-roads. The population of the United States was confined for almost two centuries to the Atlantic coast, but the mighty mind of Washington perceived that a region far more extended, fertile, and salubrious, lay beyond the borders of the thirteen states; that inasmuch as the sovereignty of the Union was distributed among the cultivators of the earth, the political power of the government would find a centre in that region; that if the natural barriers between that region and the east should remain unchanged, the west would at no distant period cast off its union with the maritime states; but that if the natural barriers could be surmounted by roads and pierced by canals, connecting the inland navigation of lakes and rivers with tide water, the wealth and population of the whole country would be vastly increased, and the states be bound together in an indissoluble union of interest and affection. Imbued with these sentiments, he stopped

not in his farewell address to discuss or to recommend his favorite policy, but boldly predicted, as a certain event, that progressive improvement of interior communication by land and water, the auspicious results of which are only just beginning to be realized. It is a fact as interesting as it is instructive that the solicitude of the father of his country knew no rest after the achievement of her independence, but passed directly from the cares of that great struggle to the greater and even more glorious work of strengthening the union of the states, and perpetuating their liberties. In 1783, immediately after the close of the war, he proceeded up the difficult navigation of the Mohawk to Fort Stanwix, now the site of the town of Rome, and crossed to Wood creek, which empties into Oneida lake and affords an imperfect communication with Lake Ontario. The noble and patriotic sentiments inspired by his observations were thus expressed: "Taking a contemplative and extensive view of the vast inland navigation of the United States, I could not but be struck with the immense diffusion and importance of it, and with the goodness of that Providence who had dealt his favors to us with so profuse a hand. Would to God we may have wisdom to improve them!" The connection of Lake Ontario with the Hudson by perfect canals, instead of the difficult and obstructed navigation of the Mohawk and Wood creek, the mingling of the waters of Lake Erie with those of the same noble river by means of a canal, the conversion of Fort Stanwix into the centre of a constellation of cities and villages, with all the consequent benefits of those improvements, reflect additional glory upon the fame of Washington, and prove that the efforts of this state in fulfilment of his noble aspiration have been crowned with the blessing of that Great Being to whom it was addressed. His contemporary, Jefferson, one of the most sagacious of American statesmen, as well as one of the most ardent votaries of liberty, pronounced roads, canals, and rivers, to be great foundations of national prosperity and union, and recommended to Congress the policy of applying the surplus revenues arising from imposts upon luxuries and from the sale of the public lands to the great purposes of public education, the improvement of the navigation of rivers, the construc tion of roads and canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it might be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of federal powers; operations by

which, as he well remarked, new channels of communication would be opened between the states, the lines of their separation would disappear, their interests would be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties.

It is worthy of remark that none of the distinguished founders of American liberty stopped to calculate the question of revenue when they recommended this enlightened policy, designed to increase the prosperity and cement the union of the states. The distinction between internal improvements and measures of public defence, upon the ground that the former can not as rightfully be carried on with the revenues of the state, or with the use of its credit as the latter, is a refinement of modern times. The statesmen of the Revolution evidently regarded free intercommunication as one of the means of national defence. Had it been then understood, as is now asserted, that internal improvement is a departure from the legitimate power of government, the opposition of the British king to emigration, and his raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands, would have found no reprobation in the Declaration of Independence, and the improvement of roads and rivers at the public expense would not subsequently have obtained an equal place with the promotion of education in the executive recommendations of Washington and Jefferson. No such absurdity was then conceived as the proposition that while a nation may employ its revenues and credit in carrying on war, in suppressing sedition, and in punishing crime, it can not employ the same means to avert the calamities of war, provide for the public security, prevent sedition, improve the public morals, and increase the general happiness.

All the questions now raised were deliberately and decisively settled in the adoption of the policy of internal improvement by this state in 1817. The estimated cost of the Erie and Champlain eanals was six millions of dollars, and the whole sum was required to be expended within seven years. The revenues of the state were at that time inadequate to defray the ordinary expenses of the government without a resort to direct taxation. In this emergency the only question raised, was upon the ability of the state, not upon its right to employ its credit. Unconscious of their resources, the people of this state alternately appealed to the federal government for its all-sufficient aid, and tendered to other states a munificent participation in the fruits, as an inducement